Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor of Berlin
Berlin is a film capital with great international appeal, as demonstrated by the many film and television producers based in the city, for instance, and Berlin’s enormous popularity as a film location. As a film capital, however, Berlin also depends on the passion that cinema inspires. This passion is expressed not only in a unique array of movie theaters, but also in the city’s wide variety of film festivals.These include the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival, which is marking a small milestone this year with its fifth edition. Congratulations!The festival should also be congratulated on its impressive profile as themost important international platform for poetry films. That is what makes this festival so special: it shows new short films from around the world, all of which have one thing in common – every one of them is basedon a poem.
And that means that both cineasts and poetry fans will be turning out to see the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival bring poems to life forwhat is now the fifth time.In this spirit, I would like to welcome all of the filmmakers, poets, and artists coming from Germany and abroad – and of course all of the audiencemembers – to the 5th ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival in Berlin. I hope you will enjoy the movies at Kino Babylon, and I would like to wish our visitors from outside the city a very pleasant stay in Berlin and lots of inspiration and new ideas. My thanks go to all those who helped to make this wonderful highlight possible as part of the poesiefestival berlin, especially Literaturwerkstatt Berlin and its partner interfilm Berlin, as well as the supporters, partners, and sponsors.
Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor of Berlin